China to ‘unswervingly’ follow zero-Covid as outrage grows against policy | World News

BEIJING: China will adhere to the dynamic “zero-Covid” strategy “unswervingly”, a top health official said on Saturday even as the alleged suicide of a middle-aged woman stuck in quarantine for weeks in a northern Chinese city added to the gathering outrage against the country’s strict infection control policies.

Videos circulating on social media from early Saturday showed a young woman crying over the body of another woman lying outside an apartment complex in a city in Inner Mongolia.

The middle-aged woman had jumped out of her locked down high-rise apartment after being stuck inside for weeks; the daughter rushed out to find her mother unresponsive.

The videos could not be independently verified but the news and footage was shared on China’s Twitter-like Weibo with many netizens commenting on the incident and sharing their own lockdown experiences.

The alleged suicide comes within days of a three-year old dying of carbon monoxide poisoning after medical care was delayed because of a Covid lockdown in the city of Lanzhou in Gansu province.

Footage of the desperate father administering CPR to the child in a small Lanzhou neighbourhood was shared widely on Weibo, triggering online outrage and criticism of the tough Covid control policies.

The boy’s father, surnamed Tuo, wrote on social media earlier this week that he had been denied permission to leave his housing complex by Covid workers and that an ambulance did not arrive in time.

Under intense public pressure, district health authorities published an account of the incident on social media on Thursday, expressing their “sincere condolences” to the boy’s father and relatives.

“We sincerely accept criticism and supervision from the media and netizens, and are determined to rectify (mistakes),” they wrote.

These incidents are the latest in a series of health emergencies, exacerbated by zero-Covid policies.

In late October, censors scrubbed Weibo posts saying a 14-year-old girl had died in the central city of Ruzhou after falling ill in a quarantine facility and being denied prompt medical care, the Associated Press reported,

In September, at least 27 people were killed and another 20 injured after a bus carrying passengers to a Covid-19 quarantine centre crashed in a remote highway in southwest China’s Guizhou province.

There’s no indication, however, that China will loosen its “zero-Covid” policy anytime soon.

Despite the economic impact and the growing frustration of citizens, top health authorities said on Saturday that the government will stick to the policies.

“We should adhere to the principle of putting people and lives first, and the broader strategy of preventing imports from outside and internal rebounds,” Mi Feng, national health commission (NHC) spokesperson, said on Saturday.

“Adhering to the dynamic zero-Covid strategy unswervingly, China will keep optimising its anti-epidemic measures according to the changes of the virus’ incubation, transmissibility and pathogenicity,” the official said.

China reported 3,837 new Covid-19 infections for Friday, 657 of which were symptomatic and 3,180 were asymptomatic infections, a slight decrease from the six-month-high of 4,045 new infections reported a day earlier, as per the NHC data.